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Hope Running Out for Mars Pathfinder
More than a month after its last success transmission, time is running out for the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft as mission controllers make their final attempts to restore contact to the spacecraft.
![[image of Pathfinder lander]](../9711/images2/pathfinder.jpg)
JPL reported October 29 that it would continue to try to contact Pathfinder through November 4. If contact was not restored at that time, they would fall back to a contingency plan to try and contact the lander only or a weekly or monthly basis.
"The normal extended mission would be over, but there is still a small chance of reestablishing a link, so we'll keep trying at a very low level," said project manager Brian Muirhead.
The last successful transmission from Pathfinder took place on September 27. Engineers did detect a signal from Pathfinder as late as October 7, but were unable to restore communications.
Although the exact cause of the failure is unknown, a combination of a failed battery and cold temperatures is the leading explanation for the silence from the spacecraft. Engineers hypothesize that the main battery on the lander went dead after the September 27 transmission. The spacecraft can still generate power from its solar panels, but the battery loss means its internal clocks would have been reset, causing it to lose track of when it was supposed to contact Earth.
Since then, temperatures at the landing site are believed to have fallen by tens of degrees as autumn begins at the landing site. Without battery power, the temperature in the spacecraft may have fallen some 20 to 40 degrees C (about 35 to 70 degrees F). That, in turn, could have caused the radio transmitter to change frequency and may also keep the flight computer from booting up properly.
"Under this scenario, the thought is that perhaps the computer is not booting up fully," said mission manager Richard Cook. "The team is sending resets to the lander at various times of the day before we attempt to send other commands," in the hope of successfully starting the computer.
There is some hope in the long-term that contact could be restored next Martian summer, when temperatures warm up again.
Even if contact is not restored, Pathfinder exceeded nearly everyone's expectations. The lander worked on the surface for nearly 3 times its planned 30-day lifetime, while the Sojourner rover surpassed its 7-day lifetime by a factor of 12. All the main goals of the mission had been met in the first weeks after landing.
The last remaining goal of the extended mission was for the lander to return the last portions of the "Super Pan", a high-resolution 360-degree color panoramic image of the Martian landscape. About 83 percent of the image had already been returned when contact was lost.